


Statements from an Empty House

by straydog733



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, MAG 159, Peter's runaway sisters grabbed my imagination and didn't let go, Statement Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-02 23:28:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21169640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/straydog733/pseuds/straydog733
Summary: Statement of Camilla Klassen, née Lukas, regarding her unusual upbringing and her departure from her family. Statement taken directly from subject at her home by Gertrude Robinson, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.





	Statements from an Empty House

**Author's Note:**

> I have a thing for OCs related to major characters, so as soon as Peter Lukas mentioned his sisters who left the family, I knew I had to do something with the concept.

**Gertrude:**

Statement of Camilla Klassen, née Lukas, regarding her unusual upbringing and her departure from her family. Statement taken directly from subject at her home by Gertrude Robinson, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London. Statement begins.

**Camilla:**

Akash, please take your juice and go to the backyard with your sister. Mummy and Miss Robinson have a lot to talk about. I love you, darling...Sorry about that.

**Gertrude:**

Quite alright.

**Camilla:**

Are you sure I can’t get you anything? I think I have things other than juice boxes.

**Gertrude:**

I’m sure.

**Camilla:**

...I’m never sure if I tell them I love them too much. I say it more often than the other mums at his school, but I just want to make sure he knows. And is my worry just the little Lukas part in the back of my mind saying that even once is too much? I never heard the words until I was ten, so I have no earthly idea how much you’re supposed to say it to a six-year-old...did it sound strange when I said it? Did it sound natural?

**Gertrude:**

I don’t have much experience in the way of parenting.

**Camilla:**

Sorry. My husband and I adopted Akash two years ago, Eileen last year, and it still doesn’t feel all the way right. My husband sharing my bed, my children asleep down the hall, I love it more than anything in the world and it still makes my skin crawl sometimes. Part of me thinks it always will.

Adoption was the only way for me. I wanted to be someone for a lonely child, to stop them from becoming a Lonely Child, but even more than that I didn’t want to give birth to a Lukas. The world makes enough of them as is, I didn’t want to bring another child into the world with that in its blood. Generations upon generations of Lukases going out into the world to lure new spouses in, I sometimes felt I was seen as a brood mare, who would eventually be sent out to get studded. Though those were largely adolescent anxieties, before I knew the full complexities of how my family worked.

I was one of five children that my mother raised, and I was fairly old before I realized that she didn’t treat all of us the same. Not just that she got on with some of us differently from others, or even that she liked or disliked us to different degrees. No, I think she took actively different approaches to rearing each of her offspring. Perhaps she was testing out different techniques, perhaps she matched each treatment to what would hurt our individual personalities most, perhaps she was sadistic and bored. But my overriding theory is that it was a deterrent to camaraderie. It was already a risk, having so many of us in one house, no matter how large, she couldn’t have us feeling we were in the same boat. So to speak.

My brother Benjamin was sent to live with different relatives for long stretches of time. Two months with a cousin, three months home, one month with an aunt, six weeks at home. Just long enough to feel uncomfortable being a guest, but never long enough to feel settled, until not even home was home. I think one of those aunts kept him in the end, though I could not tell you for sure. 

Roberta had a million expectations and demands placed on her: to look perfect, to study perfectly, to behave perfectly, until she had no time to do anything but worry about herself. She made a good victim, but not an ideal Lukas; she was destroying herself too effectively to damage anyone else. 

My youngest sister Marigold received the most direct approach. No one ever taught her to speak. When I left home she would have been about twelve and her vocabulary couldn’t have been more than a few dozen words. And no finding friends in books when the letters on the page mean nothing to you.

I was right in the middle of the pack and I think Mother was trying something new out. Something deeply, deeply cruel.

She doted on me.

Sometimes.

After months of stony silences, she would take me to an amusement park for the day, just me and her. I would be terrified at first, waiting for the other shoe to drop, uncomfortable surrounded by loud people and flashing lights, but she would take my hand in hers and squeeze it tight and I would feel safe. She would smile at me and buy me treats and take me on rides on the Ferris wheel and give me the most lovely day a little girl could imagine. And then it would stop. Not even when we got back home, but right there in the middle of the park, she would suddenly lose interest in me. Her hand would slip from mine and she would be on her way back to the car without a word, leaving me to trail behind in her wake. It was brilliant, really. I was surrounded by smiling, happy people, children my own age who I could have become friends with, but all I could feel was the sudden absence of her. She never played the trick too often, never let me become numb to it. The glimmer of hope always felt real and the wound always stung. She told me she loved me once, when I was ten. I cried over that lie for days.

How many meals did I provide for her god? How many meals do I still provide for it? Was me running away always part of their plans, knowing I would produce more fresh fear of the emptiness if I was busy hiding myself in crowds? My formal education in how to serve my-.. _ .their  _ patron had started by then, but maybe that was just the taste to let me know the full extent of what I should be afraid of. My mother was always wonderful at keeping me on a string. Even as a grown woman, if she came to my door...I want to say I would not let her in. 

But I know better. One smile, one moment of her hand in mine, and I would break. I want to think myself selfless, being a loving mother to poor little orphans, but all I’ve done is extend the eventual fallout for whenever I get dragged back. I can fill it with noises, but the silence is always still there.

**Gertrude:**

...is that it?

**Camilla:**

_ (laughing) _

What, you didn’t come all the way from London to hear about a housewife’s tragic childhood? No, of course not. None of you are ever here for me. Almost gives me a taste of my own medicine, what my brothers and sisters must have had to swallow with how Mother treated me. 

I have never met Nathaniel Lukas. I have seen Conrad Lukas a total of three times in my life, all at funerals, for perhaps a total of an hour all together. And I have not seen my brother Peter for over twenty years. And even when we shared a house, I could barely have told you what he looked like.

**Gertrude:**

Do you know anything about the current activities of any Lukases?

**Camilla:**

This one Lukas is sitting across from you, drinking a juice box. Past that, I have no idea.

**Gertrude:**

Hmm. Very well. Thank you for having me over, Mrs. Klassen, this has provided some...informative context. I hope you have not found it too troubling.

**Camilla:**

Quite alright. This has been an interesting reminder of home. But if you do not mind, I am going to go and play catch with my children in our backyard. I think I hear some of their friends out there as well. If absolutely nothing else good comes to them, I will still be able to hold onto that. My children have friends.

**Gertrude:**

They do...from what I can tell, they do seem like happy, well-adjusted children...I will see myself out. 

**Camilla:**

You are welcome to play a round of bean bag toss before you go.  


**Gertrude:**

Thank you, but I think not. Statement ends.


End file.
